Catching my breath

Now that I've had a night to recover, I can further explain my half-hysterical post below. We heard yesterday from our adoption agency that we should plan to arrive in Kazakhstan on May 12. Since the flight is 24+ hours, we'd need to leave Nashville on Wednesday, May 10 to arrive on time. A week and a half from now! The flight we've been looking at is with Lufthansa, leaves Nashville next Wednesday around 3PM, with stops in Chicago and Frankfurt, then on to Almaty.

We need a few more pieces of paper in-hand to make this a reality. First, we need the letter of invitation from Kaz, giving us permission to enter. That letter is sent directly from the Ministry of Education in Kaz to the Kazakhstan Embassy in Washington, DC. Once it's received in DC, they fax or email a copy to our adoption agency, who in turn sends it on to us. We need the invitation because it contains a number that we must use to apply for our visas (the other very important paper in this process). I think my problem right now is that I don't have the invitation in my hand. I'm still afraid that something, somewhere could backfire. Once I have that paper, I'll rest much more comfortably. Apparently our agency was able to get our travel date information before the invitation was sent to DC.

So we're planning on May 12 until someone tells us differently. There is so much to do, I can't even begin to sort it all out. Seems like we've held our breath for the past 14 months, and then all of a sudden everything is upon us.

I'm still planning on keeping the travel journal on a separate blog, so if you want that address (and haven't already emailed me for it), send an email to manicotti (at) hotmail dot com. I also plan to give my co-workers access to the travel journal, so if you comment over there while we're traveling, I'd ask that you not leave any links that might inadvertantly lead someone back to this page. Not that I bad-mouth my job or co-workers (anymore - since RD is gone!), but I'd prefer to keep this my private place for now.

I'm still in shock.

(Friday weigh-in in goal journal)